Author Games: Path of the Guildpact

Semifinals: Heccan Kirkeus

"The weeping child count not be heard,

The weeping parents wept in vain:

They stripped him to his little shirt,

And bound him in an iron chain"

- from "A Little Boy Lost": William Blake, Songs of Experience

What is death?

This is a simple question, perhaps – within its most mechanical sense, at the very least: death occurs when the boy no longer functions. Breathing halts; the heartbeat stops. Suddenly, the corpse is no more than an object without function. It lies still, never to move again, and, unlike a broken car, it cannot be fixed or brought back into shape.

Existentially, however, the question is much more complex. Does the soul die with the body? If not, where does it go? Is the soul even real? The question can be debated for years upon end, never to be proven right, because, in our world, we cannot prove the soul. Any discussion regarding our own consciousness and its function remains purely theoretical, and is like to stay this way for quite some time still. Try as we might, we cannot prove what we can't sense.

What, then, is death to those who play with it on a routinely basis? As a child, Heccan Kirkeus would crush an ant and then make it rise over and over again, much like a child in our world might play whack-a-mole for the exhilaration of simulated violence. Perhaps this is morbid, to you, but you have to remember that, to Heccan, death was never permanent. It was tiring, perhaps, to magic a creature back to life over and over again, but it was never irreversible. Death, then, becomes a strange and complex thing, for it is almost overwhelmingly simple.

Death, it appears, is temporary; the departure of a self from a shell. It is like a tenant leaving an apartment, leaving the shell to await its next renter.

"Do you agree to sign us your soul for the 2,000 years following your death?"

The woman before him is ethereal in her aura, yet ordinary in her appearance. Her hair is no lighter than his own, her eyes no less blue than Newt's had been, her frame no less slender than the women he's seen back home – and yet, nonetheless, there is no mistaking her difference. It lies in the small things: the way her hair falls a touch too smoothly; how her posture stands a tad too straight; how her smile seems a hint too wide. Perfection, as it turns out, does not stand at the top of the supernatural condition. She exists a step further, and it is that step which baffles Heccan and almost repulses him. How can anybody seem so good?

Fluffy twitches in his hand, then goes still as its head snaps towards the angel. Slowly, Heccan places a hand on the top of its skull and runs his fingers in a perfect circle. The rabbit eases against his chest, but still fails to move with the constant energy it should possess. Though Fluffy doesn't lose its tenseness, all of Heccan's worries disappear once he turns his attention back to the angel's smile.

"Oh!" she says. Her tone, somehow, manages to remain smooth even in exclamation; the melody of her voice climbs in perfect harmony, so as not to startle any listener. "There is one clarification to be made: any fragments of your soul that might die before the rest of you will belong to us until your death as well, and might be ours for longer than 2,000 years."

"Fragments of my soul?" Heccan blinks. "What do you mean?"

The angel smiles. "Nothing you have to concern yourself with, I'm sure. You're a good boy, aren't you?"

Heccan nods.

"Then you have no reason to worry, darling. Do you consent to this?"

What will it be like when I die? Heccan has never thought of the question before – he'd always assumed that, much like his parents, his own children would reanimate him and everything would remain the same. But, if what Lavina told him is true, then maybe things are more complicated than that. Maybe he'd wind up trapped in his own body as the mage who brings him back makes every decision for him, whether they know it or not. In that case, is it not better for his soul to be elsewhere, where it doesn't have to witness this?

"Sure," he says.

The angel grins at him as she pulls a contract out of the air. "Perfect. If you'll just sign at the bottom of this page.

He had expected some sort of magic to happen when he signed, but there is no flash of light or angelic sound. He doesn't even feel any different. Surely, there should be some kind of reaction to signing over his soul. A headache, maybe? Heccan hadn't expected it to feel so plain. So dull. "Did it work?" he asks.

The angel shrugs. "Why don't you ask your rabbit?"

Heccan blinks before the image can really hit him. The bones on the ground, littered without any shape, look too familiar, and yet they can't be. Maybe they belong to something else dragged into this room. He looks up and straight into the angel's eyes. They shimmer with something far from perfect.

"Where's Fluffy?" he asks. Tears swell up in the corner of his eyes as his tone climbs a pitch and cracks. "What'd you do to him?"

The angel clears her throat. "Any fragment of your soul. What did you think was animating your rabbit, darling? That kind of magic isn't allowed around here; it's better you get it out of the way now."

Heccan shakes his head. "I would've said no. You tricked me! You used me."

"The Orzhov needed to make a message about this kind of act, particularly with a potential Guildpact. You needed the seal. We both used each other."

Before she vanishes, the angel drops the seal. Heccan watches it float down to the ground and into the pile of bones at his feet. A ball forms in his throat as he begins to shake; tears pour freely now, and he does nothing to hold them back.

Three feet before him lays a rabbit; he does not stir.